The Da Vinci Experiment

Pulled an all-nighter, lots of work to be done. No sleep, no dreams and a lost night for the project. Dammit.

I realize that I’m starting from scratch. First order of business is really to start remembering dreams. I might be able to experiment with REM-sleep, certain extracts, sleep monitors and things like that, but I don’t know if it’ll come to that.

The first week I will focus on just forcing myself to remember dreams directly when waking up—and to write them down. Simultaneously I’ll do research to learn more about the whole thing.

The second week I will also focus on remembering more from dreams. If necessary, I’ll look into gadgets and pills as well, but hopefully I won’t have to.

The third week I will try to get back to sleep directly when waking whilst trying to get back into the most recent dream. I don’t expect to become aware whilst in the dream so quickly, so I hope this will work.

The fourth week I hope I can have a couple of lucid dreams so I get to try and control them. It’s a little bit discouraging that I basically are trying to lucid dream only once every 24 hours.

Maybe I can find a way to have a session in the evening as well? Or wake myself up in the middle of the night to get in an extra try there as well?

I remembered a dream this morning. Entered it into my dream journal. I was riding a taxi, alone in the backseat. And then I can’t remember anything else. I snoozed and tried to slide back into the dream, but no.

Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Fuck. I set the alarm for 7am. Instead of reaching for the black book beside the bed, I reached for the snooze button on my iPhone. And somehow pressed “off”.

Woke up 9am, late for my 8.30am meeting.

Ok, so I need a dream journal. I need it because I don’t remember my dreams. And the way to start remember your dreams, which is the first basic step to take, is to force yourself to remember them the minute you wake up. And when you can recollect anything from any dream, you have to write it down.

Why do you have to write it down? I’m no brain expert, but from listening to self-help audio tapes, I’ve learnt one basic rule:

You get more of what you reinforce.

So, if you want to reinforce remembering dreams, you have to manifest them. So, write them down.

I’d like to do it in style. So, I got myself a pretty black Moleskine notebook. Sort of like a token of my respect for my own dreams. I’ve placed the black book on my bed-side table together with a red pen.

Here we go, wish me luck.

Have you ever had a dream and suddenly you realized that you are in fact dreaming? With some training, it’s possible to stay in the dream and actually shape the story as you move along. Think Inception.

Step 1. First you need to remember your dreams. Place a notebook beside your bed and when you wake up, you write down what you remember. In the beginning you’ll be happy to remember anything, but you should pretty quickly become better and better. But don’t wait, write it down directly when you wake up.

Step 2. As you start to remember more and more of your dreams, chances are that you’ll become aware once you’re dreaming. The trick is to understand that you’re dreaming! For me, it works to see my own reflection in something. The image is often not very accurate and then I understand that I’m dreaming. Or look at the clouds, then look away and then back again. The clouds are basically never the same because your brain is basically just making shit up.

Step 3. Once you get past the tricky part of understanding that you’re dreaming, you need to stay calm. First couple of tries you might wake up from the pure excitement of succeeding. So stay calm and breathe before you go crazy becoming the superhero. Lucid dreaming is pretty cool for learning new skills.

I’ve always wanted to fly like superman. But how?

Lucid dreaming is a well-documented phenomenon. I’ve experienced it myself a couple of times. It was wonderful. I woke up within the dream, becoming conscious during the dream and understanding, “hey, I’m actually dreaming right now”.

Once I realized I was dreaming, I simply decided not to wake up. And suddenly, I could do whatever I wanted and gosh, it didn’t just feel real, it was real.

But lucid dreaming never happens to me anymore. So can I get back? Can I control it? Maybe, maybe not.

But why not give myself one month of study and experimenting to see if I actually can? If nothing else, at least I would know if lucid dreaming is something I can control or not. Simply knowing that will be good enough for me.

So let’s see if I can learn to fly.